The Frankish Reich

Expensive tastes. We've been through this before. They can price it at that absurd level because they will find buyers at that absurd level. https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/subaru/ascent A perfectly utilitarian 8 passenger SUV for around 50K. Buy 2, pocket the $17,000 savings!

And also excellent points. Guy who knows U.S. law enforcement is onto him tries to turn himself into a whistleblower in a politically motivated prosecution. We'll find out more as the case progresses.

The Biden Administration deserves credit for ensuring that the Turkey-Sweden rift didn't compromise U.S./NATO interests. https://www.rferl.org/a/nato-turkey-sweden-takeaways/32498758.html

I think ideally the Bills would've won the Super Bowl and Mitch would've walked away. He seems like a great person with a lot of commitments outside the game. It would be awful to see another concussion dictating the decision for him.

My point exactly. Although I think some of our posters here would choose the former ...

Good points. Look, anti-Biden people are jumping to the conclusion that this is an attempt to silence a guy who has the dirt on the Bidens. But ... maybe it does the opposite: this guy would know about Biden corruption because he himself is corrupt. You're not gonna find a squeaky clean source on any illegal activity.

The demanding a trade to the Rams part of the process.

Imagine what he could have built right on Harlem Rd. for $7 million. Didn't anyone pitch him that opportunity?

Yes, it would be. Even better: stop trying to prop up local economies that time has passed by. We hate to see it happen, the slow death of a marginal community. But it is happening regardless of what the governments do. Back when Republicans like to call themselves "the party of ideas," there was an idea here: give people money to move away from dying localities to the parts of the country that are thriving and desperate for workers. It made sense. You know what happened to that idea? The realignment of party coalitions happened, with rural America voting Republican. What are the chances that Mitch McConnell would approve of a plan that gave Appalachian Kentuckians the means to resettle in Texas? In Idaho? Slim and none. So both the Republicans and the Democrats must continue to subsidize their base voters: rural/small town Americans for Republicans, even if they're in a dying local economy; urban Americans in rust belt cities for Democrats.

Nothing quite on the order of suspending the constitutionally mandated presidential succession model based on ... what? Unsupported allegations of (now refuted allegations) of election machine tampering? Unsupported allegations of voter fraud sufficient to change the results in one or more states? What if the Biden Administration were to run with this? Let's say they lose in the electoral college in 2024 but claim that various states suppressed the vote. Martial law! We'll need to have the military run America (who elected them?) until we sort this out. And who will "sort this out?" Why, that would be me, the "interim president." This - along with the diabolical fake electors scheme - was so far beyond the pale that either Republican supporters are simply ignoring the magnitude of the issue (but Hillary!) or they actually think martial law would be a good thing. Sometimes its hard to tell these days.

Flynn's conviction/pardon isn't such a big deal. What is a big deal: his open support for the idea of declaring martial law to keep Trump in the White House. Nobody - Nixon, Clinton/Gore (the contested election of 2000), Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War - nobody ever suggested such a thing before. It should absolutely disqualify him from any sort of public life, "convicted" or not.

The title here almost gave me a cardiac event - when I read it quickly I thought Damar needed CPR again ...

Oh, Trump had the right to pardon Flynn all right. Questions about pardons are legitimate, particularly when the pardon bypasses the normal bureaucratic process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardon_controversy

Taking a step back here ... ... does child sex trafficking happen? Of course it does. Is it commonplace or a pervasive problem? No. A lot of what is dubbed "trafficking" is really just plain old "smuggling." The difference in law: "Smuggling" typically describes people being moved across borders because they want to be moved across borders. This is 99.9 (probably 99.999) percent of what we see. "Trafficking" involves taking a person across borders against their will, or then holding them after crossing in captivity for an illicit purpose. We saw a few things that would count as "trafficking" in the recent immigration waves, such as children being brought from Guatemala and then put to work cleaning meat packing plants. Occasionally there's sex trafficking too, but in my experience it is rare. I have dealt with the fallout of more raids on Thai massage parlors than I care to think of ("let's do a sting on the massage parlors" is always at the top of an investigator's list for some reason). After those raids the workers are always interviewed in that kind of "woke" way: "is someone telling you you have to do this? Do you feel free to leave if you want to?). And I have yet to see anyone say "i told them I want out and they threatened me and made me stay." Instead, it's always been "I'm here because I'm making more money than I could doing anything else." So a certain degree of skepticism is in order. EDIT: SF drug trafficking organizations use illegal Hondurans, many under 18, as street level dealers. The old DA wouldn’t prosecute them - theyre “trafficke” and forced into this! Thar just doesn’t fit the facts: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2023/san-francisco-drug-trade-honduras/ “Of the 25 dealers interviewed, most said they were not trafficked or were unaware of anyone being forced to sell drugs.”

What we will never know: did Flynn plead guilty and promise other things (not implicating Trump? First son in law Jared?) in exchange for a promised pardon? Note that Flynn also "forgot" to disclose that he was lobbying for the government of Turkey prior to his appointment to the tune of about half a million dollars - he filed the paperwork after his appointment. Ann all-around creep and grifter who has somehow - the only way I can think of is by pandering to the Q Anons - become a cause celebre for the nutcase fringe right.

I don’t think you understand what “entrapment” means in US law. Flynn had ALREADY LIED in January 2017 to Pence and Sean Spicer, claiming his calls to the Russian ambassador had nothing to do with sanctions. Trump himself tweeted that he fired Flynn for that reason. He did it again to federal investigators. Here’s a handy timeline: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna720671

Some weird Q Anon blogger: but they made Mike Flynn lie! Did they make him lie to Mike Pence too? Simple solution: tell the truth; it’s easier to remember.

All yesterday’s news. So … is the Persecution of Mike Flynn (or the Persecution Complex of Mike Flynn) responsible for making him the nut he is today? He used to be a serious person; now he’s calling for martial law. I don’t want him anywhere near the levers of power again.

Well that's a leap. Point taken on the prosecution. But in your search for the larger context, you miss the largest context - the context that this discussion is about. 1. Flynn lied. He lied to investigators. He also liked to the VP, which is why Trump fired him: https://www.vox.com/2017/12/2/16727988/trump-michael-flynn-fbi-lies-obstruction 2. Yes, the Government moved to dismiss in 2020. More accurately: the Trump/Barr Government moved to dismiss. Which was so bizarre that the judge ordered special briefings on exactly what was going on here: https://www.vox.com/2017/12/2/16727988/trump-michael-flynn-fbi-lies-obstruction Which one was politicized, the prosecution or the dismissal (and then pardon)? Maybe the answer is "both." That's in the eye of the beholder. But the fact remains: liar. Proven liar. And nutjob.

Christie: 1. Doesn't stand a chance. 2. Was an effective governor or what (at the time) looked like a pretty ungovernable state. How exactly he got tax reform through the Democratic machine there is kind of a miracle. 3. Did himself in with his mafia-style political retribution tactics. Maybe that's how he got (2) done after all. 4. Is at least not afraid of Trump, but in the way that freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. 5. Really needs to get on the debate stage, but if he does, expect Trump to say "I'm out." I remember a time (2014?) when The Fat Man was the Republican frontrunner for the 2016 nomination. Seems like eons ago.

He did plead guilty, and here "Tracy Beanz" brushes that aside with a "well, we all know that the false statements charge is one often used for purposes other than intended." (?) And, of course, Trump fired Flynn, who is now suing for Flynndication, which will no doubt reveal all sorts of other Flynndiocy. Oh, and consider his defender here, Q Anon fellow traveler "Tracy Beanz" (Diaz): https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/how-three-conspiracy-theorists-took-q-sparked-qanon-n900531 Qanon was just another unremarkable part of the “anon” genre until November 2017, when two moderators of the 4chan board where Q posted predictions, who went by the usernames Pamphlet Anon and BaruchtheScribe, reached out to Tracy Diaz, according to Diaz’s blogs and YouTube videos. BaruchtheScribe, in reality a self-identified web programmer from South Africa named Paul Furber, confirmed that account to NBC News. “A bunch of us decided that the message needed to go wider so we contacted Youtubers who had been commenting on the Q drops,” Furber said in an email. Diaz, a small-time YouTube star who once hosted a talk show on the fringe right-wing network Liberty Movement Radio, had found moderate popularity with a couple of thousand views for her YouTube videos analyzing WikiLeaks releases and discussing the "pizzagate" conspiracy, a baseless theory that alleged a child sex ring was being run out of a Washington pizza shop. As Diaz tells it in a blog post detailing her role in the early days of Qanon, she banded together with the two moderators. Their goal, according to Diaz, was to build a following for Qanon — which would mean bigger followings for them as well.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/children-sex-trafficking-conspiracy-epidemic/620845/

Technical point, but: He pleaded guilty. Not an "Alford plea" of no contest without an admission of guilt. So yes, it is correct that he admitted guilt before a judge.

Spanky McFapfap say what?

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